


Oxford Comma

by grapefruity



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, mostly from Amy's perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8103214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapefruity/pseuds/grapefruity
Summary: She’s got a system, and it isn’t going to come to a standstill just because her messy, disorganized, wreck of a partner makes her sometimes feel things.[or; how jake peralta is a mess and amy santiago finds that her (small case of) OCD for once, doesn't make a difference in regards to how she feels about him.]





	

Amy Santiago had always been the organized sort. Her desk is about as neat as it can get with it’s own systematic filing system and color coordinated pen set, she places three bobby pins in the same place when she buns her hair up for work, and she makes sure her pantsuits are ironed and neatly hung up before she wakes up every morning.

Maybe, it was due to the fact that growing up in a household full of boys meant that being neat required extra effort, and since she was old enough to walk, effort was practically her middle name. In elementary school, her knack for systematically coordinating the mess on her (shared) table into something pictured in an Ikea ad inspired her _mamá_ to set up a sheet of butcher paper with each of her siblings names on it, along with her own, and a star sticker for every chore completed around the house, with bonus points for every additional beneficiary action taken by each of the Santiago squad.  
  
By Christmas that year, Amy had so many star stickers her entire column was sparkling. The house had never been cleaner.

 

The brother act, along with the compulsive need to have her life in order - both literally and metaphorically - explained a lot of her relationships, when she was old enough to stop finding the concept of boys icky, and more doodling-his-name-with-her-name-in-a-heart worthy. Which, in itself was pretty icky but, that was puberty for you.

 

Louis, who was just a grade above her was the first to hear about it when Amy started dating Liam, a nice Latino boy with freckles and curly hair, and a gap between his two front teeth that she thought was absolutely adorable. She was fifteen, and apparently, ‘too young to fend for herself’ in the immortal words of one of her older brothers.

 

Amy, naturally, saw that as a challenge.

 

The system she had so carefully constructed, fit right in even in the romance category. When she was thirteen and boys had started to look at her differently, she’d noticed when her brothers would shoot protective looks their way or squeeze their way nearer towards her, puffing their chests out rather comically. She on the other hand, fended for herself by analyzing pretty much any potential suitor into several categories, and how compatible she would have been in a relationship with them.

 

Liam was perfect in every way imaginable; He was considerate, but not overly jittery, gentle but not a pushover, an accomplished debater and neck to neck with her for the position of Valedictorian. He was a carbon copy of Amy, almost, except he seemed like the perfect, more polished version of her and secretly, she envied the way he seemed to maintain his cool under pressure, or how he let the occasional racist comment bounce off of him. 

 

When she found him making out with Jennifer Caulfield under the bleachers — ugh, _damn you_ movie cliches! — she rationalized that 1. It wouldn’t have lasted through College, anyway. 2. She couldn’t hold back on her spot as Valedictorian for some dumb boy who chose a girl who smacked her gum too loud over her, and 3. She found out before her brothers did, which gave her the satisfaction of 4. Going up to him in the middle of the cafeteria and squarely driving her knee between his legs and sashaying away from him with a smug look as he crumpled to the ground in pain.

 

And that, was how Amy Santiago instigated that she didn’t need anyone’s protection.

 

* * * 

When Amy made Detective at the Nine-Nine, she made sure she came to work half an hour early, gleefully sat at her new desk and then sprayed it down with Mr. Clean until the surface of her desk looked less like the underside of a movie theatre seat and more like an actual table. An hour later, her neat stack of paper work (a sum total of: 1) was knocked over by a man who was not only late to work but also, for some reason, sliding in on actual _heelies._ She figured that the order in this particular precinct was a little… lacking - re: She witnessed Hitchcock and Scully attempt to shove their half eaten chocolate bars back into the machine for ‘refrigeration’ - but this was a whole new level of disorder.

 

Not just that, but the minute tall, white and curly knocked into her desk, flopped to the ground with a grunt, and rolled over into a position that can only ever be described as the ‘ _paint me like one of your French girls’_ pose, a somewhat short, poster boy for best secretary of the year cooed from behind her — 

 

“ _Awesome_ entrance Jake, I couldn’t think of a better way to greet the day,” 

 

Jake grins, flops onto his belly and rather ungracefully picks himself back up before nearly toppling backwards on his heelies. “Yeah it’s hard to constantly stay stylish, but I manage,” He grunts in a faux husky voice, whipping his non-existent bangs out of his eyes. He realizes a few seconds later that she’s standing there looking at him with her jaw slack and her face torn between appalled, shocked and confused. 

 

“Well well well, who might _you_ be?” He says, flashing a grin at her, wider than one she’s ever seen and for some reason, she’s instantly reminded of a golden retriever. 

 

“The detective who’s stuff, you just knocked off this desk,” She grits out, gesturing to her table before pushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear to retrieve the pens and papers that had been scattered across the ground.

 

“Alright detective-stuff-I-just-knocked-off-that-desk, who I might also refer to as detective-anal or, detective-squeaky-clean given the fact that that table is so clean I could actually see my reflection in it, which, is a concept I will soon put to the test, welcome to the nine nine!” He gleefully exclaims, snapping his fingers and looking way too unapologetic for someone who just messed up her entire table. “Now if you don’t mind me, I’m just going to navigate around this artistic mess and get myself some breakfast. Holla if you feel like twinkies! They’re full of all the essential breakfast nutrients after all,”

 

Before she can turn around to correct him as he navigates around _his_ mess he’s already headed for the break room and frowning at the half eaten chocolate bar before shrugging his shoulders and turning to Rosa for some spare change.

 

Amy decides just about then that this job wasn’t all it was hyped up to be.

 

***

 

The hardest thing about the job isn’t the arrests, or the cases, or hell, even impressing her captain, because as it turns out he’s easily sated and usually asleep. That peeves her a bit but it doesn’t bother her too much if it doesn’t stand in the way of her career.

 

No, the hardest thing about the job is having to work with the nightmare that is Jake Peralta, who she comes to discover is an actual toddler shoved into the body of a grown man. He eats candy on a daily basis to the point where she wonders how he keeps his teeth white and in place, and hoists his legs up on the desk so often she’s familiarized with the sole of his sneakers — _sneakers! At work! —_ and the distinct sound of Jake talking loudly with food in his mouth. He likes to test her buttons and make jabs at her in ways that crawl under her skin like a millipede.

 

And worst of all, she hates to admit, he’s just about as good a detective as she is. If not better. But it’s not like she’s going to be admitting to that, any time soon.

 

She doesn’t like him, she doesn’t even really try to, she merely just tolerates him because she has to and if she has to fit him into her plan, she’s going to take on the maturity he’s clearly lacking and withstand the urge to grab him by the collar of his leather jacket and shake the living bejeezus out of him.

 

And she thinks, one good thing about him is that he’s like a two-dimensional character, transparent and easily nailed down as _Man Toddler_ and nothing else, so she can slot him into her life in a specific margin of ‘ignore and don’t indulge unless necessary’.

 

That is, until one night when she finally concedes and goes to the bar in lieu of Jake and Boyle’s recent arrest - a major crook committing serial kidnappings - where she makes it very clear she’s only celebrating Boyle’s end of the victory, she’s surprised to find him cramped into a corner, being unusually quiet with half a pint of beer in front of him.

 

“Hey there,” She says, sliding into the booth opposite from him, trying not to cringe at the warm buttprint left by one Charles Boyle. “You’re being unusually quiet - did the case drain you of all the obnoxiousness you could muster?” She asked, cocking a brow.

 

“Ha ha, have you looked into stand up comedy Santiago? You’d be a riot,” He retorts dryly and she finds herself feeling pretty uncomfortable with the nonchalance injected in his tone because as far as she’s concerned, that’s not something that fits into the blueprint she’s got of him in her head.

 

“No, but I don’t doubt it,” She shrugs, leaning forward on her elbows keeping her eyes trained on his expression. “Seriously though, what’s up? This is kind of your night, I think Boyle’s getting a little overwhelmed by the attention,” Her bottle tilts in the direction of said Boyle who’s face is as red as a beet and who’s body is giddily swaying in every which direction, failing to stay upright.

 

Jake sighs, and his mouth which she’s so used to seeing in some upward tilt, is pulled into a straight, thin line. “One of Maxwell’s victims was unconscious when we found her, right before we made the arrest. She had this long, ugly scar down her leg and God she looked like someone had stuck a vacuum down her throat and sucked out every bit of flesh she had,” He suppresses a shudder and continues. “We.. got her to the hospital as fast as we could. I just got the call that she passed away,”

 

Amy blinks once, and then again before her mouth opens to say something she hasn’t yet thought of. Jake fills the gap. “I mean— I know this stuff happens, being a cop and everything but y’know, it still _sucks_ because what’s the point of being an officer if you keep the criminal alive while the college student he’s kept in his basement dies without remembering what it feels like to be treated like an actual person?” It’s the first time she’s seen him this… solemn, and it does a weird thing to her impression of him. She sympathizes, extends a hand and curls it around his, giving it a small squeeze. He squeezes back.

 

“But hey I mean, at least he’s off the streets,” He supplies, cracking into a forced grin, tilting back the rest of his beer into his mouth.

 

“And that’s because of you,” She says, offering him a glint in her eye that looks like pride. “You might not have saved her but you did save countless other college girls, and that’s what a good cop- no, a great cop is meant to do. You did good Jake. You gave her a more respectable death than the one she would’ve had in the basement of the creep who took away her dignity,” 

She sees him relax, after stiffening a little at her words. And then he smiles, in a way she doesn’t think she’s ever seen before, and for the first time, Amy Santiago sees him as a real, three dimensional person, and she likes it.

 

***

 

Teddy is just about the perfect match for her; She knew it when she first met him, and she knows it when they use their free time at the Tactical Village to finish each others sentences and quiz each other; It gives Amy a certain thrill, because hey the girl gets high on being right and earning the admiration that gleams in Teddy’s eyes every time she shoots an answer with upmost confidence, and it’s not often that she finds another officer who gets her in a way no one she knows does. 

 

He’s like Liam from High School, just better and definitely more white picket fence and definitely more perfect because of it because he’s _safe_ and he fits in perfectly with Amy’s dating criterion. It helps as well that she’s technically already been on several dates with him so she knows for a fact that he’s not a creep, or a racist, or a gamer or something equally off putting. 

 

And really it should just be as formulaic as that — she and Teddy should just bond over their shared passion for police codes and following the rules and there is no reason why she should get a lurch in her chest every time Jake drifts over and totally ruins the vibe that is going on between her and Detective Wells, and there is no reason why she doesn’t shoo him away when he joins them in target training.

 

Which is why at the end of the day when the team goes out to get drinks she manages to blurt out the thing about dinner with Teddy and tries to ignore the dejected look that briefly passes over Jake’s face and the way he repeats his words when he’s trying to hide something. 

 

She’s got a system, and it isn’t going to come to a stand still just because her messy, disorganized, wreck of a partner makes her sometimes _feel_ things.

 

***

 

It turns out that is exactly why the system comes to a stand still, when she drives back to her place and finds Teddy at her dinner table with food cooked and all she can think about is how sincere Jake looked before he walked away from her with a box full of his assorted junk. 

 

“Are those—“

 

“Pierogis? Yeah, and they’re starting to get cold, so maybe we should dig in,” Teddy supplies, a warm smile gracing his features and she feels equal parts grateful and guilty. 

 

She sits down, stiffly, and prods a fork at them, smiling back but it only feels half-real before she takes a bite.

 

“So, anything happened today?”

 

_Look I don’t wanna be a jerk—_

 

“Nope! Nothing at all!” She squeaks, maybe a pitch too loud and she hates that she’s a detective with such an obvious tell and honestly, what sort of detective isn’t someone who can maintain their cool?

 

“Are you sure?”

 

_You’re dating Teddy, and it’s going really well._

 

“Well, I mean, Jake got assigned to an undercover case with the mafia… for the next six months, or so,” She wrangles out of her mouth, her pitch resuming a normal volume but that doesn’t do much for how strained she still sounds.

 

“Wow,” Teddy says, eyebrows shooting up, taking a sip of wine as he chews in contemplation. “…And how do _you_ feel about that?”

 

_I kinda wish something could happen between us._

 

She hates the accusatory undertones that are present in his voice, and she kind of hates that maybe, Teddy has her figured out more than she has. “I think it’s good for the squad,” She squawks. 

 

_Romantic Stylez._

 

“That all?” He asks, and she notices that he’s set down his own cutlery and his eyebrows have settled into something else. A more questioning, ‘ _I know you’re lying and I’m asking you to be honest,’_

 

_“_ Jake told me he had… feelings for me,” She blurts out, going red while her focus is redirected to how many holes she can stab into one pierogi. The progress thus far, says that she can go for sixteen and counting. “And it’s honestly confusing me and- and I mean I don’t like him back, obviously!” She laughs and nervously meets his gaze.

 

“Really?” Teddy asks, slow and deliberate, pushing himself back into his seat, looking just slightly, she notes, slightly broken.

 

“I just—“ She takes a deep breath and forces herself to look at him. “I might need a week or so to.. recalibrate my feelings. Get things back in sync, y’know?” She mumbles, offering him a weak smile. He gives her one right back but it’s tight and forced and she hates knowing she’s the cause for it.

 

“Sure thing Santiago,” He jokes, fishing the last of the now cold pierogis into his mouth before shifting out of his chair to awkwardly put her dishes in the sink, rinsing them off for her. This, she tries to remind herself, is the reason why they work out, because he washes her plates when he’s done in a way she knows Jake would just leave them there to get cold and crust over. 

 

But when the door shuts, she finds that maybe that’s just not enough of a reason. 

 

And this, she also reminds herself, is why she needs a plan, and Jake Peralta is anything but planned for.

 

***

She plans for her breakup with Teddy like she plans for everything else but in traditional Peralta fashion, that gets messed up too. Along with the fact that Sophia becomes part of an equation she hadn’t even considered before, because Amy hadn’t planned to feel pangs of jealousy when she sees them peck or when Jake slides his hand into Sophia’s and she finds herself comparing herself to the lawyer in a number of ways she wouldn’t have dreamed of doing in any other situation.

 

And even after the wreck that reveals her past-not-so-past feelings for Jake, those feelings of jealousy still surface every time she hears a mention of Sophia or sometimes sees her on her way home waiting for Jake outside the precinct. Distinctly, she wonders if this was how Jake felt when she was still with Teddy. Immediately after that thought, she feels doubly awful, and not at all like doing the laundry that day, finding herself off schedule and in bed with a tub of ice cream and Netflix on in the dark like a cliche.

 

_Get it together Santiago,_ she tells herself. _He has doesn’t know how to operate a washing machine without instructions and once wore his shirt to work inside out. It’s not compatible._

 

But when she comes in in the morning, he’s holding a big cup of coffee just for her and gives her a brief glance of that sincere, lopsided smile that she catches every now and then.

 

“What’s this for?” She asked, voice rich with exhaustion as she cautiously extended her hand to take it from him.

 

“You came in late, figured that meant something pretty awful happened,” He shrugged. “We already called the bank and your family, oh _and_ the hospital and since none of _them_ knew where you were I lured you in with the bait,” He jabs a finger at the cup, biting his lower lip like he does when he’s especially proud of himself.

 

“That and well, it looks like you could use a pick me up anyway,” He says, getting a little softer around the eyes when he looks at her and her heart goes ahead and flutters without her permission. “And.. hey, look I know I’m maybe not like the Dr Bill-“

 

“Phil,” She corrects, cautiously tracing the rim of the cup with her finger.

 

“Whatever. Bill, Phil, same diff. Anyway look, I’m not like, feelings central and I maybe don’t know whatever you’re going through,” Oh, if only he knew. “But I’m here for you Amy, that’s what partners do you know? It is kind of, part of my job. I get paid to have your back. So, I don’t mind putting in the work required there,”

 

Suddenly, compatibility doesn’t seem all that important.

 

***

What Amy plans for is to never date a cop again — maybe a nice businessman, or an engineer or something equally her territory. Maybe not anyone closely resembling the actual manchild that she’s caught the case of Feelings™ for so that she can get her life back on track and stop thinking about the way that lately, she’s been wanting Jake to ruin her plan and her neatness and just. Something. 

 

(That’s when she knows she’s got it bad because she doesn’t even know what she wants from him, and historically, she always knows what she wants.)

 

Those efforts go out the window when Amy Santiago becomes Dora, and Dora, well, like she said, she’s sloppy. Sloppy enough to kiss Jake on the cheek when she knows better, sloppy enough to say a little too much at the table, sloppy enough to let him kiss her and kiss back because surprisingly, that big mouth of his feels timid and shy and searching against her lips and she’s eager to find out more.

 

Sloppy enough to push him against a tree with her full weight and feel his arms curl around her just slightly hesitant, and sloppy enough to nearly forget the buyer in favor of letting her brain short circuit and fizz out because Jake Peralta’s mouth on hers, she discovers, is what she wants from him.

But it’s not compatible. They’re polar opposites, she’s neat where he’s a rumpled mess, she’s on task while he’s off the grid entirely when it comes to focus, she’s got binders for everything and he still sometimes yelps in pain when he gets his finger stuck between the binder rings.

 

And when he kisses her again in the evidence room, she finds something out about herself; Which is that frankly, she doesn’t care because she just got what she wanted.

 

***

Slowly over time, she lets herself unwind and even has fun doing it — say for instance, in Case A:

 

Jake has her dodging around furniture in her apartment and yelping with laughter every time he gets hot on her heels, discarded pizza on his dining table and half an episode of Bloodline still playing on the TV before she trips and face plants into his couch, groaning a little at the throb that goes up her nose. The smell of week old beer hits her next, infused with whatever else he’s spilled in her couch, but it numbs the pain like some sort of backwards anesthesia.

 

Jake topples on top of her, squashing her into the couch before he rolls her around and mercilessly drags his fingers down her side unexpectedly and she squeals with laughter, struggling to get him off of her before she’s in tears crying Uncle.

 

“Admit it!” He cries dramatically, hovering over her as she catches her breath, focused on the lines that form with his stupid grin. “Die Hard actually had you _hooked,_ you can’t deny it Amy! I know your focused face!”

 

“Fine,” She breathes, still giggling as an after effect. “I might, have been a little bit invested in Die Hard there. Maybe,”

 

“Eh, whatever, that’s as good as any confession,” He shrugs, whipping out his phone where he hits the stop button on a voice recording. Amy groans and he has the decency to toss it away onto the blanket that had dropped to the ground. “I’ll always use this against you. In fact I’ll just set it as my ringtone,”

 

“You need to invest in better ringtones,” She snorts, hands cupping around his face to drag him down where he presses his forehead to hers, and eskimo kisses her, his eyes fluttering shut. “And also, you need to monopolize this proximity between us for things beyond recording me talking about how _amazing Die Hard is,”_ She cooes, voice rising in volume at the last few words causing him to crack his eyes wide open.

 

“Dammit! Seriously? That would’ve been the better ringtone, and you had to cinch that moment and yank it out of the air from me! Cruel, Santiago, cruel,” He actually looks wounded, sticking his lower lip into a pout, and months ago she might’ve rolled her eyes but here, and then, she melts, thumb rubbing over his cheek tenderly.

 

“I have a few ideas on how I can make it up to you,” She mumbles, pulling him closer so she can nuzzle into his cheek, and she swears she can feel Jake physically relaxing against her, one arm cradling her side as he leans into it.

 

“Mmm, oh yeah?” He mumbles back, turning his head into her cheek to press a few stray kisses here and there. “Do indulge me Detective, I am totally interested,”

 

And, like the cliche she has proven to be, she rolls them over until Jake’s on his back on the ground, the thick duvet cushioning the fall and Amy’s sat on his lap, lips already working down the pulse in his neck, licking and nipping. “Why don’t I just show you?” That’s the sexy voice, the bedroom voice, the voice that has Jake groaning as his arms wind around her, and she grins because there’s nothing that gets him more than a good cliche.

 

“Yes please, with a cherry on top,” He croaks, stroking a hand up her spine while the other plays with the hem of her (his) shirt. 

 

And, according to plan, she leans up and presses her lips to his, soft, sweet and smoldering, in a way that makes Jake tenderly envelope her in his arms and pull her as close as possible to him and despite the mess of the apartment, the distracting noise of the television, and the fact that she’s way off schedule, Amy concedes that there’s nothing she’s more compatible with than the wreck that is Jake Peralta.

 

He agrees with that by sliding his tongue into her mouth, and _oh hello,_ she’s going to be discovering a whole lot of new things tonight, and she doesn’t mind that at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I binge watched my way through this show and felt a train wreck of emotions over these two nerds, so here's a story that is largely unbeta'd and a byproduct of my intense passion towards the two season long burn that was Peraltiago.


End file.
